Master of Magic News

The battle map now includes less flat surfaces and the appropriate location model to make them more interesting and immersive.

So, we’re at the end of July now, and I am sure you’re all wondering how things are progressing, right? Well, things are going well. We are producing regular patches (8 big ones so far) to catch bugs as well as modify features due to feedback and/or add new ones.

Our biggest hurdle remains firmly in the AI behaviours. While the AI at the moment is learning more and more complex tasks and combinations, and in the weeks to come, we will hopefully have it become more and more aggressive and proactive towards the player.

But for now, we come across such odd diplomatic conversations:



I mean, I did not declare war on him, and I certainly did not refuse any offers, maybe I accidentally said no to a date, or something, and he’s upset now? Don’t know, but he is angry...



I’ve had a few questions on social media in regards to what we’ve changed from the original, so I’ll try to give some examples here. We do not have a list that we can share, as many of the changes happened organically, so while trying to implement a thing, it needed to be changed because it did not work with our systems; or, feedback and ideas leading to new features, etc.

So spells are one of the things that we tried to copy almost 1:1, but inevitably, there are things we could not duplicate. All of the original spells from Master of Magic are in the game, but some have changed mechanics. I’ll discuss the few examples I can think of:

[h2]Web[/h2]
Original web - Web is a Common Nature Combat Instant. For a base cost of 10 Mana, it may be cast on an enemy unit during combat to prevent that unit from moving or attacking for a while. If the target is a flying unit, it will also lose this property until the end of the battle .

New Web - A strong spider's web tries to entangle the enemy. Target unit gets -3 resistance and may be immobilised (D10 roll - current resistance the result = number of turns active, but the minimum is 1). Web also prevents flight for the rest of the battle, even if it did not immobilise its target.

The reason for the change was that we did not have the mechanic to handle the original design, in terms of it being immune to resist rolls. We had many talks about how to best imitate the original with what we could do, and after a discussion with our beta testers, this was the compromise that was reached.

[h2]Flying Fortress/Fortress of Flying[/h2]
Another such spell is Flying Fortress. In the original, the spell made the town and all its defenders float, and thus, the spell's effect is to prevent Walking and Swimming units from entering or leaving the town limits during combat.

Our version has been renamed (fun fact, it is actually the only spell we renamed, I think...) to Fortress of Flying, and it now gives all of its defenders the ability to fly. Again, the change was made because it would be very resource consuming to try and emulate the original mechanic 1:1, it would also potentially require additional graphics changes on top of the correct mechanic. So, in the end, our solution was to keep with the spirit of the original - making it harder for non-flying units to conquer a city.





One of the most talked about feature changes was actually movement points. When we started Beta, back in May, the movement points for all units were doubled. This did speed up the overland exploration quite a bit, but we soon discovered we had not fully considered the knock on effect this would have, especially on battle tactics. Ranged units were particularly affected here, as they could now move quite a bit and then still shoot in combat. Some of the more powerful creatures that were originally slow but dangerous, also got, well, more dangerous with that extra speed.

So, after a lot of talks with the testers as well as the team, we reverted the changes to adding +1 movement to all units, with exceptions of +2 movement to such units as settlers, engineers, ships, heroes, floating island and non-flying mounted units(mammoths, beetles, turtles). In addition, non-magic ranged units were given +1 to ranged attack, to compensate for the range penalties as enemy units can now run further away.

And while we are talking about ranged units, we also made a change to magic ranged attacks, in that our system does not use Mana for magic ranged attack, it uses the same system as normal ranged attacks, so ammo. A unit with magical ranged attack will have the ranged attack strength listed as usual, but they will have the magic ranged skill listed in their abilities and thus their ranged attack will have the ‘magic’ qualities. This was once more a decision led by the need to streamline certain areas of the game, in terms of not adding more custom mechanics that are complicated for us to script and potentially for a new player to grasp.

And, one of the sticky points that we’ve tried our best to resolve via dialogue with our testers as well as our own design ideas, is the hydra. After many talks and ideas, we decided we are unable to emulate its original 9 figure mechanic, but instead, we worked hard to give our Hydra more robust statistics so that it remains a strong and interesting fantastic unit. So our hydra now has an impressive melee attack of 15 and 45 hit points (in comparison to 6 attack and 10 hit points in the original) which we hope compensates for the multiple vs one figure change.





Below I shall also mention a few things our wonderful testers added to the list of changes and stuff they wanted to talk about in the dev diary.

So, in the spirit of every little helps, we have the: Dethstryke the Swordsman had an axe but he has been fixed and given a sword - I mean, it ain’t much, but it shows we care, right?



Amongst some of the memorable bloopers we had so far, we had the inexplicable, yet somehow lore appropriate gaps in reality where Myrran cities could be seen on Arcanus and vice versa... Or, our draconians were so into the fact that they can actually all fly, they decided that building shipyards is for wingless fools only. We also had like really polite raiders, where if you were defending a town and got attacked, you chose to flee, because you knew you would get murdered, and yet, the nice fellas would let you stay in your city after you flee, effectively, giving up their sure victory...





I can’t give you a detailed one, but let me try to map out a few things we have planned for the coming weeks:

• Animation speed adjustment option is awaiting implementation
  
• Choosing the number of enemy Wizards you will face in a game
  
• Choosing the map size
  
• Implementing Time Stop and Fortress of Flying
  
• Fixing the end game (this may in fact be in before I publish this...)
  
• AI improvements continued
  
• Adding High Score table
  

Out of development, we’re also working on some things for the marketing team, as well as putting together a game manual (yeah, that was fun to do, considering the complexity of the game...)


Thanks for your patience and stay tuned for future updates.

Dev Diary #11 June 2022

Busy beta times.
Last month we officially entered into closed beta and now, together with the first wave of testers, we are working hard at bug hunting and monitoring player feedback. As such, this month I am only going to quickly say that we are alive, we are working hard to make that announced early Autumn deadline!

Here is a link to the Home of Wargames video, where you can finally see some gameplay and myself ;)
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

And here are a few screenshots of things we improved via feedback (we did a lot more, but those are a few visual bits I can share.

Locations no longer have the additional red markers under them, to allow for better immersion. And units also have a less obtrusive bottom marker.

We now have a help button in combat that explains battle mechanics in a more comprehensive way.

And the building queue now has the arrows so you can rearrange your building orders. You can do this from either the building manager screen or the main city view.

And, the main city view no longer shows you the current unit/building being constructed as next, as it did before.


These are obviously only little snippets of the work happening behind the scenes now. We are hunting down many bugs as well as balancing issues with the help of our committed testers. We hope to show you more gameplay in the future as we push on towards release, but for now, that’s it folks.


And I shall leave you with a peek at some amusing (well, not so amusing for us when we try to find it..) bugs. As you see below, we sometimes have our players pay a hefty price for destroying their enemies' cities or, in fact, for keeping them!

*Note this is not a feature and the bug has been potentially found and squashed as we speak...


Thanks for your patience and stay tuned for future updates.

At Home of Wargamers Slitherine will be streaming Master of Magic for the first time. The game has just entered its beta, and it is the version that will be shown.

It will be a thorough stream which will tackle the basics of the game. First we’ll go over the wizards selection screen, and have a look at the available wizards, then we’ll show the wizard customization screen.

Then it’ll be time to jump into the worlds of Arcanus and Myrror. We’ll load a savegame from an established playthrough and show you how city management, army management, exploration, research, alchemy and diplomacy work.

Last but not least, battles! We’ll load a sizable battle and show how it works, and how the right spells at the right time can influence its outcome.

None of this has ever been shown before. It will be the perfect chance to have an exclusive first live look at the game in its entirety.

May 10th has almost arrived, and we are ready to share the Event Schedule with you all.

See you all on Tuesday next week at www.twitch.tv/slitherinetv at 14.11 pm BST.

#HOWlive2022

Personal log: How are we doing so far?
We’ve had a pleasantly surprising response to the beta announcement, and also just to us working on the remake. As such, we have seen a lot of new ‘faces’ on our community sites. With that in mind, I decided that this month’s dev diary will take a look at the team and try to give you an insight on how we’ve been doing thus far.



So, for those of you who are new here, our team is made up of six people:



A’vee - CEO’s Boss, UI master, creative director, sound designer.

Khash - ‘The Programmer’ aka grandmaster of all MuHa code!, CEO

SirPi - Lead Game Designer

Yuuki - Writer/Quest designer/Community manager

Obi - Programmer

Shell - Lead QA and everything else we might need of him...


In addition to the fantastic six, we work with freelance artists and composers and the wonderful Andy, a programmer who worked with us on the UI code.



Team Q&A

We will start with a few questions I actually asked the team myself:

What is so far, your favourite part of working on Master of Magic?



Khash: Modability is by far the most interesting part for me, as this opens the possibility for players to make the game truly their own, something that a team of any size won't be able to achieve.

A’vee: I had a lot of fun creating those tiny animations for the 2d town map - things like little characters debating in front of the university building or a tiny wizard atop the Wizards' Guild. I feel these have really added life into that map, I wish I could spend some more time on this task.

SirPi: For me, the joy and tribulations come together in the complexity of the original game’s rules. There are just so many little exceptions and quirks. And then you try to capture them, and recreate them, but also keeping in mind we want new players to discover this magic too. If we had more than six people and our resources, I think there could easily be a whole team with me working on how to approach this. So yes, I love doing it, but it is also tough.

Obi: It’s probably been said before by someone, but the spells and working on them. The key role spells play in the game and their versatility are the true selling point and the thing that makes Master of Magic stand out. And so working on recreating and implementing those spells, so that they continue to give the player that sense of magic and power has been really interesting and inspiring.

Shell: Working on an existing and classic IP, or more specifically, attempting to recreate the old magic while bringing it into the current game market. I spent a lot of time playing and researching classic MoM in preparation for this, so seeing our version and how the two work together is what I enjoy.

Me (Yuuki): Delving into a wonderful, magical world that has meant so much for the history of gaming. Interacting with the awesome fanbase, even when they are critical, I just like the fact that we’re talking and resolving stuff. I also really liked adding some background story/lore to wizards and heroes and races, although I will say that also goes into the ‘stressful category’. I loved doing it, but I didn’t always get it right, and I hate it when my recreation causes disappointment for the core fans. Still, MoM is such a rich game, it is a blast to work with its many, magical possibilities.



What has been the most challenging aspect of working on MoM so far?

Khash: Recreation of someone's idea is much harder than inventing one on your own. Trying to get such a huge list of features and mechanics of the game the way the original inventors wanted it to be, was the most challenging work I ever worked on.

A’vee: For me it was unit and hero design - recreating full unit portraits in high resolution based on the few pixels in the classic MoM. Back then it was mostly the player's imagination that designed these units. Doing them afresh (yet still in a way that would resemble their specific features!) was quite fun but due to the great number of units and time,as well as budgetary frameworks, there wasn't a lot of wiggle room for creating different versions to choose from - we had to get it right the first time.

SirPi: Exceptions to rules and features that need to be implemented just for one thing. This is what makes MoM special, but also what makes it a nightmare sometimes to implement, track and balance... You need to code it all, implement it, then find space on the UI to try and explain it to the player. It can be a real headache - I am looking at you Torin, master of exceptions...

Obi: I am actually gonna say spells again, because as inspiring and cool as they are, they are also insanely complex and often riddled with exceptions and mechanics that apply only to one spell. And then of course you have to make sure the AI is able to use all of those wonderful spells properly. So that has been and continues to be a real challenge.

Shell: Catching all the exceptions and nuances that may have escaped us. And I am looking forward to sifting through all the beta tester bug reports and feedback by myself soon...

Me (Yuuki): Managing fan expectations. I am constantly worried about remaking such a great classic with a small team and available resources. In Thea, our restrictions didn’t matter as much, we were able to adjust our work as we saw fit or as we had to due to limitations, but here, there are targets we need to hit for the game to be a real remake, and so, there is little room left to cut or even to add a bit of ‘us’ to it.



Community Q&A

We also reached out to the community for any questions they may have.

Here's a fun question to try to answer without upsetting fans of either camp: How much influence of Thea will there be in the new MoM?



This is a tough one to answer really. Thea and Master of Magic are very different games and while they obviously share some aspects of the 4x genre, the two/three games approach those aspects in vastly divergent ways.

But, if I was to fish out an aspect, apart from hexes and some genre similarities, I would say that both games appreciate that perfect balance is not always the way to have fun in games.



Will there be any balance changes to existing spell factions?

No, we are not balancing the magic for now, however, this is subject to change, pending the beta tests and player feedback, that’s when we will consider tweaks and changes to mechanics and balance.


When will we see the first animations? When magic effects? When will we hear music?

A question I have been wondering about is: is there going to be like a couple minute play through that THEY have done and recorded? Not necessarily for us which I know beta is coming for us… but if we don’t get picked for it. I’d like to just see a couple minutes of it if nothing else.

In answer to both of the above, Slitherine is planning their Home of Wargamers Live on May 10th and you can expect some Master of Magic exposure there, so note the date!



How much of the gameplay is 1:1 with the original game and how much is revisited? I’m interested from the perspective of future plans: are you going to expand on the original concept more on a future game? Or DLC to this upcoming game? Or are you planning to encourage more user content and mods as a primary means to extend the game?

We have tried to recreate as much as we were able to without the source code and detailed design notes. As for the future plans, well, we are not counting anything out, but neither do we have any solid plans right now. This is because we are a small team, and we tend to focus on the project at hand as it is, and then expand our plans accordingly once we see how it is all going. However, we have included a lot of modability, so yes, we do hope modding will pick up and be great.



Will the music be done in house, or are you looking at outside talent? Also, will it be only remasters of the originals, or are there plans to add a few more entries?

Our music is outsourced, and done by the wonderful Murmur Studio. The OST is actually ready, and the music is inspired by the original rather than a remaking of it.


Do you intend to make AI profiles, that means different AI routines that play differently instead of one AI master routine?

Our diplomacy AI does have several variants depending on the Wizard’s character (see answer below). Apart from the diplomacy AI, at the moment, we have only one AI routine, although this routine can be modified in the game settings to raise/lower difficulty. The scripts for the AI are moddable though, so perhaps in the future,either we ,or the modders, will be able to adjust this.



How smart will the AI behave in regards to diplomacy and co? Pls don't give us something like the original that goes like: "you want peace? Ok!" and "you want this awesome spell that is gamebreaking? ok!"

An mentioned in dev diary #7 January 2022 , we are working on the diplomacy AI having a lot of complexity. So the enemy Wizards have their behaviour patterns, and should act in accordance to those, as well as our actions towards them, or any needs they may have (so, in theory, they should offer to trade when they actually need something from us, and not randomly offer up spells).



How is the New MoM going to address the 'final 50 turns' problem? Mainly that the latter 1/4 to 1/3rd of most 4X games range between 'dull' and 'perfunctory', where the outcome is defined and known by the player but not yet the game engine.

This one is a huge question, for most of the 4X genre, I guess. In short, and I will sound like a broken record here, we have not addressed such things a lot, beyond putting an effort into working on the AI and its complexity. We are finding that recreating Master of Magic in all its glory and faults alike, is a huge task for us already, so we will approach such questions most likely during the beta process. In the past, with our Thea games, we found working with our community was the best way to find/add/polish and in doing so, also address those kinds of big questions from new angles. So, in short, we hope to find some ways to address this, but our focus remains on the remake first.


This [MoM] story needs a proper wrap up! Could we have an interview of the original creators together with the new team and modders? This game has been burnt in so many minds since the 90s, I think the world needs to know more about it. Such brilliant ideas surviving the test of time mean a lot more than what meets the eye.

I [Yuuki] would be happy to participate in such an event, for sure, but apart from the modders and dedicated fans with whom I am always open to talk to, we have not had any contact with the original game creators.



Visual Update

We now have the map view as you enter your city, which we implemented so that it would be easier to instantly know which city you are managing.


One in the city view, you can still switch to the 2D map view, to see what building you have, or just have a look at the nice map...


We finally also have a working mini map, yay. And, at the very top right corner, you can see our nifty Bug report button, which will become invaluable in the months to come, during our beta.



Beta news
Our plan is to begin beta tests this week!

We will do the tests in waves, meaning that we will not invite everyone who applied at once. Our first wave, in fact, will be very small. We do not have precise plans on the frequency with which we will increase the beta tests, so please remain patient with us as we do our best to include as many willing participants as we can.

Thank you so much to everyone who has applied by the way! The response has been super cool, and I know together we will make Master of Magic great again.

The time has finally come, and we can tell you more about our next Home of Wargamers, which will take place, as you already know, in beautiful Venice on May 10th.

It will be a great chance to be updated on our already announced games and discover new, exciting, upcoming releases.

In the following weeks, we will announce the official schedule of the live event, but you will also get more information on our social channels and newsletter.

Stay Tuned and activate the reminder on our Twitch channel.